1. Technical Field
This invention relates to a safety knife and the combination of a safety knife and a protective garment which are employed in conjunction for significant protection to the user of such knife used in meat, fish and poultry processing operations to avoid injury to the user by the improved knife point being incapable of deep penetration of the protective garment during such processing operations. The knife point includes a series of projecting serrations adapted to snagging engagement with the protective garment to avoid injury to the user or processing operator.
2. Background Information
While the subject knife provides protection against injury to the user wearing any kind of clothing, it is especially effective for use by commercial users of such instruments who normally wear protective metal-containing garments to safeguard themselves against injury when working in food cutting operations. The metallic-type garments are heavy and unwieldy placing a wearisome weight burden on the wearer. It is a primary objective of this invention to eliminate the use of such heavy metallic garments which are extremely tiresome.
Recent developments in the manufacture of protective garments such as aprons, gloves, sleeve, arm and leg coverings, or the like have been placed on the use of yarns consisting of various combinations of synthetic fibers and metallic cores and outer wrappings of such fibers and steel wire strands. Such garments are commonly fabricated from yarn which has been formed into the fabric or woven material for forming such garments by conventional knitting, fabric forming and weaving apparatus. Examples of such yarns and protective garments produced therefrom are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,384,449; 4,470,251; 4,777,789; and 4,838,017. The protective garments made from such yarns and woven materials have previously been utilized with conventional knives in solid food processing, especially in meat, fish and poultry processing operations, which are frequently conducted in assembly line fashion. Such garments, when worn by the operator, have been designed to prevent cutting or slashing penetration of the garment by the knife as wielded in such operations. The knives of various sizes have virtually all been formed having conventional curved points with the usual sharpened cutting edges. The wide variety of fabrics used to form such protective garments are particularly effective against cutting and slashing movements by users of conventional knives; however, neither the knives nor fabrics have provided significantly effective protection against thrusting or penetrating type movements of the knife blade. Many of the protective garments are multi-layered having a biased structure adapted to resist cutting and slashing. Very few of such fabrics and virtually none of the cutting knives employed therewith have been structured to avoid thrusting movement or low-velocity ballistic effects which may allow deep penetration of the garment and possible injury to the user.
Previously, most of the benefits of the improved yarns and their fabrication into protective garments has been their resistance to being cut with a sharp instrument such as a knife. The use of various fiber combinations together with wire as the core for a covered yarn has provided improvements in cut or slash resistance to protect the wearer of such garments; however, conventional knives have been used therewith with virtually no improvement to conventional knives for the aforesaid processing operations. Knives have been provided which have conventional points which are sharpened on their cutting edge and which occasionally allow highly undesirable knife penetration through the garment which, while cut and slash resistant, is not resistant to thrusting or high-angular penetration of the garment. Thrusting movement of the knives has heretofore been subject to particular avoidance in the training and education of meat cutters to prevent injury to those wearing the above-described garments. Such restricted movement has required processing personnel to be extremely careful in their cutting operations to avoid possible injury to themselves or others. As stated, the use of conventional knives requires generally restrictive movements by the user to avoid possible injury wherein the protective garment can be penetrated.
Most of the protective garments, metallic or otherwise, utilized in commercial operations such as gloves, aprons, arm and leg coverings, and the like have provided protection against normal cutting movement; however, none have been specifically designed to counteract thrusting movement of a conventional knife which is capable of penetrating the garment to allow possible self-inflicted injury to the user.